It is often desirable for an equipment operator to know the rate and quantity of articles being dispensed by certain dispensing equipment. For example, farmers who use mechanized equipment to plant agricultural products must know the quantity of seeds that are being dispensed by the mechanized planting equipment in order to optimize crop production and yield in a given area. Often, a farmer must know the quantity of seeds being planted in each row by the mechanized planter in order to optimize production or even if the seed tube planting device is blocked.
To provide rate, quantity, timing, total and blockage information to farmers and other operators of equipment, a variety of sensors and systems have been developed which are capable of detecting that an article has passed along or through a predetermined path and displaying article dispensing performance metrics (i.e. rate, quantity, timing, total and blockage). In the case of mechanized seed planting equipment, most of the detecting sensors utilize electro-optical transducers which receive a light beam transmitted across a seed tube which light beam is interrupted or interfered with by the passage of seeds through the tube. Every time the light beam is interrupted or sufficiently diminished below some predetermined threshold, a “seed event” is said to occur and, for each seed event, the sensors typically send a signal to a central monitor which adds a count to the total count and displays the total count and other information.
In one example agricultural control system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,864,781 to White, there is described a multi-drop communications that has single point wiring faults that typically cause this type of bus structure to fail or partially fail. This system appears to use a “unique ID code” for each sensor in the system but this feature results in a burden on configuring the monitoring system. The association of this ID with a sensor position is required during the installation or maintenance of the system and hence is not a quick process since each sensor has to be plugged in sequentially and the installer has to wait on the display to recognize the sensor before plugging in the next one.
Nonetheless, with the increase in complexity of the communications system, there is a need to have enhanced diagnostics, fault-tolerant communication bus, and simplified installation.